23 April, 2025Reflections on how the New Education Policy plays out in the classroom
The National Education Policy, 2020 emphasises the acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy by Standard 2. Yet, little is known about how the related initiatives have translated into changes ...
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Suman Bhattacharjea Shweta Bhutada Akanksha Bisht 
26 March, 2025
- Notes from the Field
The wide-ranging benefits of India’s Public Distribution System
India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) is the world’s largest food transfer programme and India’s most far-reaching social safety net, accounting for 60% of the country’s social assistance b...
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Kathy Baylis Ben Crost Aditya Shrinivas
- 17 February, 2025
- Articles
Network membership and demand for health insurance
Despite being free and having liberal eligibility criteria, the adoption of public health insurance in India remains low. This article examines how informal networks influence adoption behaviour, in t...
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Titir Bhattacharya Tanika Chakraborty Anirban Mukherjee
- 17 January, 2025
- Articles
Is open defecation still prevalent in rural north India?
In an attempt to understand open defecation in four focus states in the aftermath of the Swachh Bharat Mission, Vyas and Gupta evaluate the findings of the NFHS-5. They note that the NFHS is likely to...
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Aashish Gupta Sangita Vyas
- 20 January, 2023
- Articles
Phone-based assessment data: Triangulating schools’ learning outcomes
Recent research has shown that schools often report overestimated learning outcomes, as they fear adverse consequences if they report poor performance. In this post, Gupta et al. describe a pilot stud...
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Rahul Ahluwalia Vaani Chopra Niharika Gupta Saloni Gupta Azeem Panjwani Kumar Satyam Prakhar Singh
- 11 January, 2023
- Articles
Credit cooperatives: Promoting worker well-being during crises?
Research shows that access to alternative credit mechanisms during the pandemic enabled informal women workers to gain financial security, benefitting their mental well-being in the process. Based on ...
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Devika Oberai
- 06 January, 2023
- Perspectives
India’s early years mathematics curriculum: Continuity, discontinuity and progression
Research has shown the importance of building strong foundations for learning, as the development of cognitive skills in preschool and early primary years is predictive of later mathematical achieveme...
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Benjamin Alcott Suman Bhattacharjea Caroline Dyer Aashna Khurana Purnima Ramanujan
- 02 January, 2023
- Articles
Challenges in access to secondary education in India
India’s latest National Education Policy has envisaged universal access to education by 2030. However, while enrolment is high in elementary schools, access to and uptake of secondary education has ...
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Mridusmita Bordoloi Sharad Pandey
- 09 November, 2022
- Perspectives
Tracking learning outcomes: ASER’s work through the pandemic
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns, schools quickly pivoted to online learning. However, there was limited information about whether children had access to learning m...
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Rukmini Banerji Wilima Wadhwa
- 31 October, 2022
- Videos
Tracking learning outcomes: ASER’s work through the pandemic
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns, schools quickly pivoted to online learning. However, there was limited information about whether children had access to learning m...
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Rukmini Banerji Wilima Wadhwa
- 31 October, 2022
- Podcasts
Insuring India: PM-JAY’s targeting problem
India’s largest health insurance programme is targetted at poor and vulnerable populations who would be least able to afford medical care. However, this article by Chhabra and Smith shows that a lar...
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Sheena Chhabra Owen Smith
- 19 October, 2022
- Articles
The future of old times
India needs to plan for a radical expansion of public support for the elderly. In this piece, Drèze and Duflo argue that near-universal social security pensions would be a good start. Elderly persons...
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Jean Drèze Esther Duflo
- 26 September, 2022
- Perspectives
High scoring but poor: The misallocation of talent in higher education
As labour market returns to college education have increased, more young adults now receive some form of higher education than ever before. Yet, college attendance remains low for children from poor s...
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Andres Yi Chang Jishnu Das Abhijeet Singh
- 08 September, 2022
- Articles
Illam Thedi Kalvi: A booster shot for post-Covid education
Amidst worries about learning loss caused by school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, Tamil Nadu's Illam Thedi Kalvi (ITK) – a volunteer-based education programme – has played a vital role in...
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Sarthak Agrawal
- 05 September, 2022
- Notes from the Field
Access to antenatal care and its influence on children’s cognitive development
Research has shown that maternal health affects later-life outcomes of children. Using data from the Young Lives survey in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, this article shows that antenatal care has an i...
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Neha Adsul Sarthak Gaurav Priya Rampal
- 29 August, 2022
- Articles
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Human Development Posts
Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: District-level estimates from Census 2011
The 2011 Indian Census data show a higher growth rate of Muslim population compared to the Hindu population. This article provides an in-depth picture of Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials at the di...
- Saswata Ghosh
- 27 March, 2019
- Articles
Understanding India’s mental health crisis
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, several reports have indicated a worsening of mental health issues among individuals across age groups. In this post, Michele Mary Bernadine examines the stat...
- Michele Mary Bernadine
- 06 April, 2021
- Perspectives
Ten steps to transform the quality of education in India
In this article, Sridhar Rajagopalan, Managing Director of Educational Initiatives, suggests 10 initiatives that can help transform the quality of education in India.
- Sridhar Rajagopalan
- 19 November, 2015
- Perspectives